Born on October 15, 1800, the son of a blacksmith and tool manufacturer in rural Warwick, Massachusetts, Amory Gale received his early education at the Chesterfield, N.H., and New Salem Academies and read medicine in nearby Royalston, all as a young man. Hampered by ill health, Gale had a strong desire to enter the ministry, but after attending medical lectures at Dartmouth in 1823, he completed his course of medical studies at Brown, receiving his diploma in 1824.

Beginning as an allopath in Barre, Mass., Gale moved frequently while attempting to establish his practice, passing through Amherst (N.H.) and Canton, Mass., before settling in South Scituate. An instinctive reformer, engaged in the causes of temperance, antislavery, and peace, Gale studied theology under the Unitarian minister Samuel J. May while in South Scituate, and was ordained in Kingston, Mass. in 1844. His ministry, however, was brief. After occupying the pulpit in East Bridgewater, Mass., Southington, Conn., and in Pembroke and Norton, Mass., ill health once again intervened. Too ill for the demands of the ministry, Gale returned to medicine, converting from allopathy to a homeopathic practice more in keeping with his reformist instincts. He built a thriving practice in Woonsocket, R.I., before relocating to East Medway, Mass., in 1853, where his wife had family. Gale remained there until his death on Feb. 20, 1873.

Gale married Martha Leland of Warwick in 1825, with whom he had six children: Caroline (b.1828), Martha (b.1832), Mary (b.1835), James (b.1837), and Annah (b.1840). He is buried in Warwick.